Survey: Only 3 In 10 S’poreans Unhappy With Voting Day Despite Massive Online Outrage

By
Sarah Lee
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It was only two months ago when we stayed up till wee hours to catch the live results for GE2020.

We spammed our Red Bulls, drank countless cups of coffee to stay awake.

We fought the zz monster and glued ourselves to the TV to find out who will be leading our country for the next five years.

Image: Giphy

And the reason why this happened?

Because for the first time in Singapore’s history, voting hours were extended on Polling day, and the day wasn’t exactly smooth-sailing.

Several complaints were made by the public on 10 Jul 2020.

One involves a lady who lost her chance to vote due to human error and miscommunication between the two election officers handling her registration on that fateful day:

The snaking queues and long waiting time to cast the vote also caused public outrage.

So much so that the Elections Department (ELD) had to apologise to the general public more than once for the inconvenience caused.

Well, it might be two months down the road but it appears the Election Department (ELD) is still very much focused on the issues that cropped up during that fateful day.

They’ve commissioned a survey with the assistance of government feedback unit Reach.

The aim was to understand the reason for the abnormally long queues at some polling stations and the lessons that the ELD can learn to improve on future elections.

And the results were released yesterday, September 10.

The Majority Were Satisfied With Their Experience At Polling Stations

Seven out of 10 respondents were satisfied with their experience at the polling stations.

Now, if we were in school scoring a 7 out of 10 would’ve been in the A2 band but the fact that the other three in 10 respondents had a less than satisfactory voting experience is “not acceptable”, the ELD said.

“We apologise for this, and thank voters for their patience,” the ELD added, as reported by Straits Times.

The survey was conducted between July 23 and 30, with more than 1,000 Singaporeans above the age of 21 as respondents.

The results were weighted by gender, race and age to ensure that they were demographically representative.

Aside from the feedback on their overall voting experience, they also collected inputs about the waiting time and organisation of the event.

The Majority Feels It’s Well-Organised

Around 78 per cent of the respondents feedbacked that the polling process was well-organised while about 17 per cent were neutral and 4 per cent disagreed.

About 77 per cent agreed that the election officers were helpful to voters when carrying out their election duties, while 20 per cent were neutral and 4 per cent disagreed.

Which isn’t surprising since a polling agent had stepped up to tell the world about what his experience in GE2020 was like:

When asked about the time they took to cast their votes, about 80 per cent of the respondents mentioned that they spent less than 30 minutes for voting, while 9 per cent mentioned that they took 45 minutes or more.

Respondents who voted at schools and community centres or clubs said that they had a poorer voting experience due to the length of time it took to vote.

“Voter satisfaction decreased significantly with increasing time voters took to cast their vote, with a ‘cliff effect’ observed when the voting time reached 30 minutes,” ELD said, as reported by Today.

Though 84 per cent of voters who took less than 10 minutes agreed that they were satisfied with their overall experience at the polling station, only 54 per cent of those who took between 30 and 44 minutes agreed.

Only one in 10 of those who took longer than an hour to vote said they were satisfied.

Huh, guess there’s really such a thing as a silent majority, after all.

Read Also: ELD Explains the Long Queues During Polling Day; It Turns Out Many People Had Voted in the Morning

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Sarah Lee
Email: [email protected]